The Most Important Two Minutes of Your Life

Two minutes here and there rarely matter very much over the course of a day, a week, a lifetime.

But there are two minutes you could spend, right now, that would have a huge impact on your life.

I’ll save you the suspense: it’s two-minute meditation.

And it’s extremely simple: take two minutes out of your extremely busy day (cat videos) to sit still and focus on your breath. Just keep the gentle fingertip of your attention on your breath as it comes into your body, and then goes out. When your mind wanders, take note of that, but then gently come back to the breath.

That’s it. No mantra, no emptying the mind, no perfect lotus position, no meditation hall or guru (bald Leo Babauta). Just pay attention to your breath. No need to push thoughts away, just come back.

That might seem too simple to matter much. And in truth, you won’t get miraculous effects after two minutes of meditation. You won’t reach nirvana, you won’t be suddenly calm all day long.

But you will probably feel a little calmer. You will have created a small space of undistractedness in a sea of distraction (Facebook). You will have learned to notice when your random thoughts pull your attention, urge you to go check on something.

This is an amazing start. And if you do this two minutes tomorrow, and the day after that … all of a sudden you have a few new skills. You can create space between your thoughts and urges, and your reaction. You can create a pause that will cure your procrastination habit.

And the best part: it only takes two minutes a day. If you don’t have two minutes to spare, you might want to loosen up your schedule (Flappy Bird).